The University of Windsor presents: Imagining Diasporas: Space, Identity and Social Change When: May 14-16, 2004 Where: University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada Co-Sponsored by the Centre for Studies in Social Justice and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Confirmed Speakers: -Brian Keith Axel “Diasporic Sublime” -Nina Glick-Schiller “Biologies of Belonging: Blood, Diasporic Longing, Long-Distance Nationalism, and the World Beyond” -Judith Sinanga Ohlmann “La diaspora rwandaise: où ‘l’origine’ perd son sens” -William Safran “Diaspora: Disconnection, Hyphenation, Reconstruction” Individual and panel proposals are invited to address issues of broad theoretical interest, as well as case studies of individual diasporic communities. In particular, papers and panels addressing the following themes and questions are encouraged: Diasporas: How are diasporas imagined? How is belongingness negotiated vis-à-vis host countries and overlapping diasporas? What is a diaspora in an age of global demographic shifts? How do diasporas differ from ethnic groups, minorities, and multicultural communities? How are diasporas conceptualised? Space: How do diasporas relate to spaces left, lost, forfeited, imagined, gained, and/or experienced? How does space create, reinvent and/or erode diasporic identity and culture? Identity: How do we define diasporic identities in the 21st century? Who does the defining? How do processes of remembering and forgetting shape these identities? What role does culture play in preserving, maintaining and/or developing individual identities? Social Change and Social Justice: How do diasporas relate to processes of oppression, resistance, subversion, and globalisation? How do issues of social injustice play out in the creation, maintenance and aspirations of diasporic identities and cultures? To what extent do visions of a just future fuel diasporic identities? Diasporic Cultures: What are diasporic cultures? How do they relate to other cultures? What function do they play in the preservation, disappearance and promotion of diasporic communities? How do they change, and why? How do they relate to other diasporic cultures? In a globalized world, where do diasporic cultures end and “mainstream” cultures begin? Pedagogising Diaspora Studies: What is it? Who does it? What is taught, to whom and why? How do space and identity affect its delivery? How do Diaspora Studies link to and differ from other sub-disciplines (minority studies, ethnic studies, multicultural studies, etc.)? * Conference Participants are responsible for their own travel expenses.* Email: feldman@uwindsor.ca or visit http://athena.uwindsor.ca/diasporas for further information.